Cats and Dogs, Strawberries and Chocolate
by LadyDivine91
Summary: A power outage. A horrible rainstorm. A long day of work and school. They're all trying their best to ruin Kurt and Blaine's Valentine's Day. But the moment they remember what's actually important, nothing in the world can ruin what they have together. Klaine Kurt H. Blaine A.


**Notes: Written for the Klaine/CC Valentine's Day Challenge 2019 prompt 'This Is the Time' by Billy Joel.**

"_Ugh_ …" Kurt grumbles when he races into his building, blown inside by the wind and rain, and sees the lights overhead fizzle out. "_Flippin' Con Ed … still haven't gotten the power fixed_ …"

_Surprise, surprise._

Kurt had expected this when he'd found out a transformer had blown in Manhattan last night, but he'd also hoped he'd be proven wrong.

No such luck.

The lights in their building are dim as it is on a normal day. The power company had _the whole day_ to work on it. Why did Kurt assume it would be fixed? Then again, what does he know? He can't even replace a fuse in their heater. Repairing the power grids for the entire city? That has to be a little more complicated, right?

Luckily, he didn't have too many issues with the power at work. Vogue is a magical wonderland, it seems, run entirely on dreams, fashion, and utter fabulousness. But at NYADA, it was a pain in the butt seeing as the actual building is older than a Vaudeville stage mom and just as temperamental. He got through dance class fine since they're held on the upper levels, with huge windows where outside light can flood in. Intro to Musical Theater was a bit more challenging, being held in a downstairs auditorium with no windows and thus no help from the outside.

His costume design class, taught in the basement, was canceled entirely.

He'd hoped that living in Bushwick, their loft would be safe, but no. Apparently what's going on isn't a _Manhattan_ thing, but a _5 Boroughs_ thing, ergo they're going to have to suffer through intermittent hours of cold and dark until things get fixed.

What sucks worse is that it's Valentine's Day, and a power outage of this magnitude definitely ruins Kurt's plans for the evening.

Looks like they're home for good.

Kurt takes the stairs up slowly, mentally punching himself in the gut for not having the forethought to plan anything for Blaine before now. It's not like he didn't put in _any_ effort. He had every intention of buying Blaine roses, but when the subway glitched out while he was trying to make it to work, he opted to bypass the small florist on the corner on his sprint to the bus thinking he'd pick up flowers on the way home. Little did he know that a sudden rainstorm would make the man who owns the kiosk pack up early. Kurt took for granted that he would. Aren't street-side florists like the post office on candy and flower themed holidays? Neither rain, nor sleet, nor black of night, or whatever?

When that backfired, Kurt considered picking up a box of chocolates. Two Targets and three drugstores later, he discovered that every box of chocolates had been sold out, and the lines for the boutique candy stores were wrapped around the corners. But Kurt wasn't out of the running just yet. He hedged the rest of his bets on dressing them both up in their finest and going out to dinner. But if the electricity wasn't a factor, the weather is. It flares up outside when he thinks about it, dropping rain in buckets on the snow and ice covered sidewalks.

Kurt never did like Valentine's Day. And even though he'd once decided (for the space of about a week) that it was his _new favorite holiday_, it still rubbed him wrong. But that doesn't mean Blaine doesn't love it. (And, yes, Blaine once said it sucked, but _that_ didn't last long, either.)

It's just one day – one stupid, made-up day. Kurt has no excuse not to make _one day_ special for Blaine's sake.

But on this Valentine's Day in particular, the universe is trying him.

He reaches his floor and stops, glaring down the hallway at his loft door. With the wind howling outside and the lights sputtering overhead, it's like a scene from a B-rated horror movie.

_Yup_, Kurt thinks. _That sounds about right._

He pads gently down the hall, trying his best not to make too much noise and alert Blaine to his presence.

No reason to disappoint the man he loves so soon.

He turns his key in the lock, slides the door open, and is greeted by a sea of black, the only light visible coming from the glow of emergency candles in the kitchen.

"Hey, honey," Kurt calls out unenthusiastically as he unwinds his drenched scarf. He's wrung it out twice already, but it's somehow still extremely wet. "Are you home?"

"Yes," Blaine replies, sounding just as thrilled as Kurt.

Kurt slides the loft door shut. "How've you been?"

"Uh … fine?"

"Have you been stuck in the dark all afternoon?" Kurt asks, making small talk while he peels off his sopping wet coat. He's going to have to hang every stitch of his clothing in the bathroom. If he leaves it to drip by the front door, they're going to have a moat by morning.

"Yes and no," Blaine says, accompanied by a scuffling sound, like pots sliding across the stovetop. Kurt hears a crash, and more scuffling ensues, along with a quietly muttered, "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" All thoughts of wet clothes and eventual moats aside, a curious Kurt leaves the rest of his belongings by the front door and creeps into the kitchen.

"Honey?" Kurt hears another _crash! _followed by another defeated_ 'Shoot!'_ "Is everything …?" The lights flicker on and stay on, and Kurt sees Blaine, holding a strawberry that has seen better days, staring at him like a deer about to be flattened by a Chevy Malibu. Thick, brown goop drips from Blaine's fingertips, from his wrist, and from his palm. It's on the stovetop, the floor, the counter, the wall, pouring over the lips of two pots, and it's even in Blaine's hair. Kurt deduces that the brown goop is chocolate – badly melted chocolate - and it seems to have gotten everywhere … except on the strawberry "… all right?"

"I … uh …" Blaine mutters, licking his lips and looking around at a kitchen he probably hasn't seen in decent light for the past hour. He looks at the uncovered strawberry clenched in his hand and sighs. "Uh … no. I'm sorry." Blaine wipes at a drop of melted chocolate on his cheek with the back of his hand, but that only smears it up to his eyebrows. "I think I messed up."

"What were you trying to do?" Kurt grabs a hand towel off the handle of the oven and rescues Blaine from his strawberry.

"Well, I had the day off, and you didn't," Blaine starts, reluctantly releasing his berry and allowing his exhausted-looking fiancé to help him clean up, "and with the electricity and the rain … I didn't want you to think that the second you came home I'd expect you to rush out again and do something. So I thought, you know, I'd make you a special Valentine's Day dinner, with chocolate-dipped strawberries for desert. But the electricity kept going out, so the oven wouldn't turn on for the roast, and the chocolate refused to melt right, and now …" Blaine looks up at Kurt, his face dotted with chocolate that Kurt couldn't originally see, traveling in a line across his forehead "… I'm a little bit … covered."

"Yes." Kurt leans in and licks the smear on Blaine's cheek. "You are."

"I should have just called DoorDash and had someone deliver a perfect dinner for you, but I felt so guilty expecting someone to come out in this weather to bring us food."

"Well, it _is_ their job," Kurt says, carefully picking dried chocolate out of Blaine's curls. "They're getting paid for it. If you felt guilty, you could have given them a big tip." It strikes Kurt at that moment that _he_ could have done the same thing – fired up the old DoorDash app and ordered dinner, flowers, chocolates, better candles. It would have arrived before he did and the night would have been saved.

"You're right," Blaine agrees. "I should have just done that. I wrecked Valentine's Day."

Kurt stops picking at chocolate when Blaine drops his head, and he wraps his arms around him. In the quiet of their kitchen and underneath the blinking overhead lights, Kurt tries to think of a way of letting Blaine know that this isn't that big a deal. It's one day. It's one dinner. It's a situation entirely out of their control. At least Blaine _tried_ to make their evening special. Kurt, racing across the city and bypassing every store on every block, is the one who really messed up. He works at Vogue! He could have had one of the staff photographers whip up some tastefully NC17 photos of him that he could have slid into a portfolio folder, wrapped in newspaper, and brought home.

He just didn't think of it.

Because everyday living in New Yok City is as stressful as it is wonderful. Everything's so chaotic, so _expensive_, and no matter what time of the day it is, it always seems like they're working – homework and Vogue and their jobs at the diner. Yes, this was one night, but it was a night they were both fighting to make memorable.

But regardless of what they wanted, Mother Nature and Con Ed had other plans. So they're going to have to make do.

It won't be the first time. Nor the last.

There are going to be trying times ahead for them, things bigger than a ruined holiday. It's inevitable. That's part of getting older. And when those days come, as trying as tonight is, this will be a day they look back on, smile wistfully at one another, and remember when Kurt came home looking like a drowned rat and Blaine tried to dip strawberries in the dark.

There's nothing wrong with 'making do' as long as they're doing it together.

"Excuse me for saying so," Kurt says, "but I don't see this as you _wrecking Valentine's Day._"

Kurt feels Blaine's head move as he peeks up at him. "You don't?"

"Nope. I don't see this as you wrecking it at all. In fact …" Kurt holds his fiancé at arm's length so that he can get a better look at the damage he's done – chocolate on his face, chocolate on his jaw, chocolate on his hands. He's messy all right, but not enough for what Kurt has planned. He reaches over to the stovetop, to the pot of quickly cooling chocolate, and dips a finger inside "… I think that you have given me the greatest Valentine's Day present in the whole world."

Blaine raises a puzzled eyebrow. "And that is …?"

"An excuse …" Kurt takes the chocolate on his finger and begins to spread it on the clean areas of Blaine – a swipe across his lips, one down the bridge of his nose, trailing down over his Adam's Apple to the hollow of his neck "… to spend a rainy Valentine's Day here at home … licking chocolate off my sexy fiancé."


End file.
